Google announces measures to tackle child abuse images online

Google is working on a project which would allow it to share
child abuse image information with other tech companies in order to
better detect and remove the images from the internet.

The technology takes advantage of a technique known as hashing
which Google has been developing since 2008. It identifies
instances of the same image -- it's how TinEye helps you find
original or higher resolution versions of online images. After
tagging images of child "pornography", hashing allows duplicates to
be picked out elsewhere on the web.

"Each offending image in effect gets a unique fingerprint that
our computers can recognize without humans having to view them
again," explains a Google press release on the matter.

"We have a zero tolerance attitude to child
sexual abuse imagery online," said Scott Rubin, Director of
Communications and Public Affairs at Google. "The fight to remove
these images from the Internet is a global one, and we hope these
measures will help in that important battle."

The announcement comes after weeks of discussion over how to
deal with the problem of child sexual abuse images online, prompted
by the cases of Mark Bridger (who murdered five-year-old April
Jones) and Stuart Hazell (who murdered twelve-year-old Tia Sharp),
both of whom accessed child porn on the internet.

Google will also be donating millions of pounds to efforts aimed
at protecting children online, including a £1million technology
fund seeking to develop tools to make online child protection
easier.

"Google have stepped up," said John Carr, UK Government
adviser on Child Internet safety. "No one can argue about that. In
all my time working in this space no company has ever devoted
anything like this level of resources to working with civil society
organisations to attack online child abuse images. This is an
important moment. It should focus the minds of other industry
leaders in relation to how they are going to join the
fight."